Population and people in Fellsmere — Fellsmere, Florida

About 5,000 people live in Fellsmere: the U.S. Census Bureau counted 4,834 residents on April 1, 2020, and the state's April 1, 2025 estimate is 4,987.

The 2020 figure comes from the 2020 Census DHC table P1 for Fellsmere city, a full count rather than a sample. Ten years earlier the 2010 Census table P1 recorded 5,197 people in Fellsmere, so the city lost 363 residents over the decade (5,197 minus 4,834), a drop of 7.0 percent. The Florida Office of Economic and Demographic Research puts Fellsmere at 4,987 on April 1, 2025, a gain of 153 since the census, in its county and municipal population estimates. The state table lists no inmates in Fellsmere, so its estimate less inmates is also 4,987.

The American Community Survey figure of 4,953 in the Fellsmere DP05 profile is a five-year average, not a head count, and the rest of this page uses that survey because it is the only source that breaks the Fellsmere population down by age, origin and language. Every ACS figure below is from the 2020-2024 5-year release. For a town this size the samples are small, so most Fellsmere percentages carry margins of several points; the median age, for example, has a margin of 8.3 years.

Three in four Fellsmere residents are Hispanic or Latino, 76.3 percent of the population, and most of them, 3,353 people, report Mexican origin.

The Fellsmere DP05 table counts 3,778 Hispanic or Latino residents. Mexican origin accounts for 67.7 percent of the whole city, Puerto Rican 1.3 percent and other Hispanic or Latino groups 6.5 percent. Non-Hispanic white residents make up 12.2 percent of Fellsmere and non-Hispanic Black residents 11.3 percent; within that Black population the survey records 203 people identifying as Haitian, 4.1 percent of the city.

The contrast with the rest of the county is sharp. The Indian River County DP05 profile puts the county's Hispanic share at 13.9 percent, and the Florida DP05 profile puts the state's at 27.4 percent, so Fellsmere's share is more than five times the county's. Mexican origin, 5.0 percent of the county and 3.3 percent of Florida, is the majority group inside Fellsmere city limits.

The same pattern shows in the town's school. Fellsmere Elementary, the campus at 50 N Cypress St now run as Fellsmere Academy, enrolled 605 students in 2024-2025, and 500 of them were Hispanic, according to the National Center for Education Statistics school record.

Fellsmere is far younger than Indian River County as a whole, with a median age of 32.0 against 55.3 for the county and 42.6 for Florida.

Children under 18 are 30.6 percent of Fellsmere residents, double the county's 15.0 percent and well above Florida's 19.5 percent, from the Fellsmere, county and state DP05 tables. Children aged 5 to 9 alone are 13.6 percent of the town, and adults aged 35 to 44 are 22.6 percent. At the other end, residents 65 and over are 8.8 percent of Fellsmere, compared with 34.8 percent across Indian River County.

The Fellsmere estimates also show far more men than women: 63.3 percent of residents are male, a ratio of 172.3 males per 100 females, against 93.9 in the county. Among adults 18 and over the ratio is 146.0. The survey does not say why, and the margin on the city ratio is wide (39.3), so the gap should be read as large but imprecise.

Spanish is the main home language in Fellsmere: 68.2 percent of residents aged 5 and over speak it at home, and only 30.1 percent speak English only.

Of 4,526 Fellsmere residents aged 5 and over in the S1601 language table, 3,087 speak Spanish at home. The Fellsmere DP02 profile puts the share speaking any language other than English at 69.9 percent, and 25.4 percent of residents speak English less than very well. In the Indian River County DP02 profile those shares are 14.1 percent and 4.5 percent, and statewide the Florida DP02 profile shows 30.6 percent speaking a language other than English.

The school system reflects it. The district's Fellsmere Academy page bills the campus on Cypress Street as A Dual Language School serving grades PreK-7, with its slogan printed in English and Spanish.

About one Fellsmere resident in three was born abroad: 1,560 people, or 31.5 percent, and 97.6 percent of them were born in Latin America.

That foreign-born share in the Fellsmere DP02 table is about three times Indian River County's 10.0 percent and well above Florida's 21.9 percent. Of Fellsmere's foreign-born residents, 44.4 percent are naturalized U.S. citizens. The largest single group of Fellsmere residents, 55.3 percent, was born in Florida itself.

Fellsmere is also a place people stay. In the same survey 97.6 percent of residents lived in the same house a year earlier, against 88.4 percent in the county, and only 0.9 percent had moved in from a different county.

Fellsmere's 1,258 households average 3.90 people each, far larger than the county average of 2.33, and more than half of them include a child.

In the Fellsmere household data, 52.7 percent of households have at least one person under 18, against 18.0 percent in the county figures. Married couples head 49.2 percent of Fellsmere households, and the average family has 4.18 members. Florida's average household size is 2.51.

Formal schooling levels in Fellsmere are lower than in the county. Among residents 25 and over, 22.4 percent did not reach 9th grade, 69.4 percent finished high school or more and 12.1 percent hold a bachelor's degree or higher. The Indian River County figures are 3.1 percent, 92.0 percent and 33.8 percent.

For readers placing these numbers on the map: the City of Fellsmere lists its address as 22 S. Orange Street, and the Fellsmere Trailhead Preserve and Welcome Center opened on November 3, 2016 northwest of the I-95 and CR-512 interchange. The city Community and Tourism page highlights Blue Cypress Lake, the St. Sebastian River Preserve State Park, the Frog Leg Festival and the Marian Fell Library. Last verified: October 12, 2026, on the U.S. Census Bureau website.